Kisses From Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption

by Katie J. Davis

  But the Lord had also planted in me a desire to share the truth He had shown me in Uganda to the people who surrounded me now in America. I wanted to share with them the truth that while their children were alive today, more than sixteen thousand other children are not, because they died of hunger-related causes in the last twenty-four hours.1 I wanted them to know that another three thousand children in the world, mostly in Africa, will die of malaria today—malaria, which is both preventable and treatable.2 I wanted to share with them the truth that many of us seemed to have overlooked—that God wanted us to care for the poor, not just care about them, but to truly take care of them, and many of us were not doing so. God told us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but so many of our neighbors were starving to death while our tables were filled with abundance.

  Most of the people around me expected me to feel relieved to be back. Understandably, many people I saw in my hometown asked the same question: “Isn’t life hard in Uganda?” Of course it was hard, in certain ways, but they didn’t seem to understand that what was even harder was being back in the States, away from my children. There were days when I felt my soul had been ripped from my body, that my purpose had suddenly been stripped from my being. I hadn’t realized what a transformation had taken place while I had been in Uganda, the spiritual richness I had experienced in material poverty and the spiritual poverty I felt now in a land of material wealth. Anyone could see that my life had changed drastically with the addition of six children, but less perceptible and more powerful was the revolution that had taken place in the core of my being. Having been changed so much in my new home and then returning to my old one came with many tears, lots of stress, the loneliness of being misunderstood, and considerable disagreement and strain in my relationship with my parents, who were still hoping I would change my mind and come back to the States to attend college as I had promised them.

  During the time I spent at my parents’ house, I remembered a favorite story, The Velveteen Rabbit. It begins with the rabbit, fluffy and beautiful, “just as a rabbit should be,” but all the rabbit wanted was to be real. The boy who owns the rabbit loves it to tatters; his velveteen fur becomes worn and his stuffing starts to come out. “So much love stirred in his little sawdust heart that it almost burst. And into his boot-button eyes, that had long ago lost their polish, there came a look of wisdom and beauty, so that even Nana noticed it next morning when she picked him up, and said, ‘I declare if that old Bunny hasn’t got quite a knowing expression!’ ”3

  The boy loves the bunny “so hard” that he loves his whiskers off and the pink fur on his ears turns gray. After the boy contracts scarlet fever, the doctor says the beloved, worn-out rabbit has fever germs and must be discarded, so Nana throws him out. And only then, when he is tattered and ugly, does the fairy come and make him a real rabbit, all sparkly and new, who can run and play with other real rabbits. He wasn’t patched up or glued back together. No, he was transformed, made altogether new.

  I was like that velveteen rabbit. When I first went to Uganda, I felt sparkling and beautiful, as a teenage girl from Brentwood “should” be. But now I spent my days without makeup, getting my hands dirty and doing hard but meaningful work. I was tattered and worn out. The beautiful, dirty people who populated my life had loved all the polish and propriety right off me.

  I’d been hurt and scarred and banged around a bit in the past year, but God was using all those things to help me become real. My stuffing was coming out because I’d been loved to tatters. I was coming to understand that what it means to be real is to love and be loved until there is nothing left. And when there’s nothing left, and we feel we’re all in pieces, God begins to make us whole. He makes us real. His love sets us free and transforms us.

  I don’t know if I would have realized how drastically I had changed since moving to Uganda had I not returned to the States for a visit. Something about being back in an old environment caused me to see how completely different I was becoming—from my friends’ lives, from my family’s life, from everything I’d known in America and certainly from what I’d planned to be.

  One day while in the States, I received a call from Christine in Uganda and found out that a change had taken place during my absence. The doors of my home are always open, and everyone in my family knew this and was looking for ways to share what we had with our neighbors. Christine’s five-year-old cousin, Joyce, also from the war-ravaged area of northern Uganda, needed a place to live after losing all her other living relatives. Christine pleaded with me to let her stay at our home, but I didn’t need much convincing—of course she must come to live with us! How could we say no, knowing the need this child had and that we had the ability to meet it, to provide her with love, a family, and a slew of sisters to play and grow with?

  Though I had never met Joyce, she was now part of our family, and I couldn’t wait to get home and meet her. I remember the first time I heard Joyce’s voice on the phone. She was quiet at first, but then began to giggle, perhaps in response to the fact that her new sisters were giddy with excitement to know that I was on the other end of the line. At that point Joyce knew me only as a strange voice. She had no idea who “Mommy” was and why the others were so excited about me. I longed to take her into my arms and explain to her that I would be there soon and that I would love and care for her forever. I longed to speak love and tenderness over the darkest corners of her young life. But what struck me most about that first phone call with Joyce was what she said to me: “Thank you for food, Mommy. Today I am still alive.”

  My heart stopped. This little girl, at five years old, is simply thankful to have something to eat so she can stay alive. My mind began to race as I looked at the food piled high in my parents’ kitchen: Joyce is still alive, but so many others are not. They are dying of starvation and preventable, treatable diseases. Why, with all the wealth, technology, and resources that exist in the western world, have we not solved these problems? It is possible for children to live! And yet they are dying by the thousands. While we sit here full and content, everything we ever need right within our reach.

  As hard as it was to be in America, I knew this was why God had brought me back. This is why I had come to raise money. It wasn’t to build a ministry for myself; it was to help change lives and invite other people to do it with me.

  The needs I had seen in Uganda were never far from my mind; they weighed on me as a heavy, passionate burden. I needed to get back to Africa. I needed to go back to doing everything within my power to help the people around me live better lives. And I needed to get back to my girls, to reconnect with the six I was already in love with and wrap sweet Joyce in her new mommy’s arms.

  People I had known growing up had said, “Welcome home” when they saw me in the neighborhood. But Brentwood didn’t feel like home anymore. Frederick Beuchner writes, “The place God calls us to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I had been more than happy all my life in my home in Brentwood. But my deepest gladness and the world’s deep hunger met in Uganda. My heart sang in Uganda. Everything in Uganda made me feel alive. Uganda was home, the place God was calling me, and I had to get back as quickly as possible.

  ONE DAY . . .

  May 7, 2008

  Amazima Ministries.

  Amazima, in Luganda, means “the truth.” To be honest, it was chosen quickly without much thought, because we had to provide the government with a name for our nonprofit. God said to me, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” I opened my Bible to John 8 and it said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” I went to church that Sunday and guess what the pastor said? Yes. “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

  Today, about a year after naming this ministry Amazima, I stand in awe of the truth with which God has presented me. In Uganda, I strive to teach my children and all children in our program and in our villages “the truth” of Christ. I know I cannot
walk into a village and tell a child that Jesus loves her. She cannot comprehend that because, chances are, she has never been loved. I have to feed her, clothe her, care for her, and love her unconditionally as I tell her that I love her. Once she can understand and see my love, I can begin to tell her about a Savior who loves her even more. That is the truth for these children—that they are loved, that they are valuable, that they will not be left as orphans but that they have a plan and a hope for the future. What a beautiful truth.

  I have a young friend named Maria. The truth is that Maria had never had a bath before I took her home and gave her one. The truth is that Maria has no one who cares for her. No one who tells her she is loved. The truth is that Maria is sent from her home in the slum outside of Jinja to beg on the streets for food, and no one in Uganda wants to touch her or help her or cares that she is sick. The truth is that Maria is just like you or me. A person. Real. A child of the King.

  Meet Rose and Brenda. The truth is that they are orphans. Abandoned and living in an orphanage. Now two of 143 million.4 The truth is that when they go to bed at night no one tucks their blankets in around them and kisses their foreheads. The truth is that when they wake up, frightened, in the dark, no one runs to comfort them. The truth is that due to someone else’s carelessness, Brenda will die of AIDS.

  Meet David and Bashir. The truth is that these precious little boys were child soldiers, abducted, sold as property, and forced to kill. Now that the war is winding down, they are not permitted back in their villages because they are seen as traitors, so they beg on the streets.

  And the truth is that these are only the children I know, in a very small fraction of a very small country. The truth is that there are children like this all over the world, sick, starving, dying, unloved, and uncared for.

  The truth is that the 143 million orphaned children and the 11 million who starve to death or die from preventable diseases and the 8.5 million who work as child slaves, prostitutes, or under other horrific conditions and the 2.3 million who live with HIV add up to 164.8 million needy children. And though at first glance that looks like a big number, 2.1 billion people on this earth proclaim to be Christians.

  The truth is that if only 8 percent of the Christians would care for one more child, there would not be any statistics left.

  This is the Truth. I have the freedom to believe it. The freedom, the opportunity to do something about it. The truth is that He loves these children just as much as He loves me and now that I know, I am responsible.

  8

  HOW GREAT A DISTANCE LOVE CAN BRIDGE

  I was more than happy to land at Entebbe airport. I took a deep breath of the air that smells like what I can only describe as “Uganda” and let it fill me with the joy of being in the place God has called me. The simple sign, made of stone and placed beside the runway, reads to arriving passengers “Welcome to the Pearl of Africa,” but to me it whispered “Welcome home.”

  The first two days I spent back in my house in the village began the same way, with a little brown hand rubbing my face and a soft voice saying, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy, it’s time for wake up.” The second morning, Agnes looked at me and said, “There it is! It came back!”

  I asked her, groggily, “What came back?”

  With joy she could hardly contain, she replied, “That light that lives in your eyes!”

  Yes, it was back. So was the joy that dances in my heart. I felt alive again, humbled beyond belief by how much I loved my life, ecstatic to have a large bowl of rice after a long, hot day—and wonderfully at home.

  I fell in love instantly with my new daughter, Joyce. I love all children, but God puts something special in my heart when He intends for the children to be my own. The love is different than the love I feel for anyone else on the planet. It’s the love that lets me know that this child is indeed my daughter.

  Joyce is tall, bald, and stunningly beautiful. Joyce is a caretaker; she has a deep love for all people. She will take care of anyone she can; babies, animals, even insects can sometimes be found being carted lovingly around in her little hands. She always wants to make sure that everyone around her is content, especially younger children. She finds joy in giving love to others and is happiest when helping someone else. She is boisterous and animated, often making up words to tunes she knows and singing them at the top of her lungs, or running up to tackle her baby sisters or me in a wonderfully unexpected bear hug.

  Something had happened during my fund-raising trip and when I returned to Uganda; for the first time, I didn’t feel so far away from my parents and my former life anymore. I had learned while being “home” in America and away from “home” in Uganda just how small this earth really is. It was as if the two worlds I had been living in had finally merged a bit and I was discovering just how great a distance love can bridge. God really does have the whole world sitting in the palm of His hand. All of us are, literally, neighbors. With the simple purchase of a plane ticket, I can get from my house in the village to my parents’ living room in twenty-four hours. And I could get back to Jinja from Brentwood in twenty-four hours as well. People tell me they miss me; they think I am so far away. But I’m not. I’m right here, on the same earth as everybody else, doing what I know to do to make it a little bit better.

  Many people think of Uganda as another world, a place barely connected to the societies and cultures they consider more advanced. Certainly, differences between Africa and other parts of the world abound. But we all have so much more in common than we have distinctions. So much more binds us together than keeps us apart.

  In Uganda, as in all the nations of the earth, human beings are hungry for God; they long to live lives filled with purpose and love. They want to be able to support their families; they want to be able to work; they want to be able to give back and to be good, noble people. They want to feel important and needed and beautiful. Children want to play, eat, learn, and be loved. We are all the same. We do not live in different worlds; we live in the same world.

  People are people. They all need food and water and medicine, but mostly they need love and truth and Jesus. I can do that. We can do that. We can give people food, water, medicine, love, truth, and Jesus. The same God created all of us for a purpose, which is to serve Him and to love and care for His people. It is universal. We can’t do it in our own strength or out of our own resources, but as we follow God to wherever He is leading us, He makes the impossible happen.

  People from my first home say I’m brave. They tell me I’m strong. They pat me on the back and say, “Way to go. Good job.” But the truth is, I am not really very brave; I am not really very strong; and I am not doing anything spectacular. I am simply doing what God has called me to do as a person who follows Him. He said to feed His sheep and He said to care for “the least of these,” so that’s what I’m doing, with the help of a lot of people who make it possible and in the company of those who make my life worth living.

  I was so happy to be back in my element, back with the people I loved, doing the work I enjoyed. Sometimes I felt like the “old woman who lived in a shoe,” the one from the nursery rhyme: “she had so many children she didn’t know what to do.” There were children everywhere and there was so much exuberance I didn’t know what to do.

  The first weekend I was home, the children in our program spent the night at my house, about 140 of them covering every square inch of the floor. They sang a song they had practiced the entire time I was in the States: “We are the children of Amazima. We are happy to see you, Mommy. We missed you, Mommy Katie. We love you! We love you! Welcome home!” I thought my heart would burst. We spent a happy evening singing, praying, laughing until we hurt, reveling in the fact that God had brought us together.

  The next morning, I noticed a rash on a little girl named Shadia. After inspecting her and her brothers and sisters I concluded it was scabies. Scabies is the kind of disease that makes a lot of people cringe. It is a contagious skin infection caused by a tiny mite t
hat burrows under the skin and creates incredible itching. It begins as a rash, but the little bumps soon become open wounds festering on the skin. Scabies is often a result of living in filth for a long period of time, but it is also transmitted quickly by skin-to-skin contact. In this case, six of the eight children living in the home were infected.

  I had visited the home where these children live. I will never forget it. Their living conditions were some of the worst I have seen. The eight children lived with their widowed aunt and their dying grandmother. These women did their best to provide, but all their hard work was rarely enough to provide the children with life’s most basic necessities. They lived six miles from the nearest water hole, so they used the same water over and over. The children slept in a pile, like dogs, in a small corner of the dirt house. And yet these children were quick to dance and laugh and sing, just like children everywhere.

  Now they were suffering. Their scabies was in its early form, but without treatment they would become extremely ill. I spoke to a nurse at a nearby hospital and she told me how to treat them. To cure the scabies, the children needed to bathe in warm water twice a day and then receive an application of a certain ointment. They could not share water, towels, or of course ointment.

  The nurse’s instructions made sense to me. It seemed a reasonable course of action, except that the children lived in abject filth. How in the world will this family ever get enough water for all six children to have their very own bath? I wondered. If they do manage to get the water, how will they heat it? This family doesn’t even own one towel; they certainly don’t have six!